


Fallen Harder

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Ark Era, First Kiss, First Meeting, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The movie turned out to be boring. But the kid sitting next to him, Bryan, was not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallen Harder

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to an anon request on tumblr to write a Bryan/Miller first kiss fic.

“So you heading back to Alpha station?” Bryan asks him, as the movie ends and people start to stand and stretch. The audience is almost all Farm Station kids; Miller was only invited last minute by his Chem lab partner, who told him, hey, you need to do _something_ with your Friday night and there will be some pretty cool people there, it’ll be fun. He hadn’t been totally convinced. Farm Station’s nowhere near Alpha and he’s not really a movie night kind of guy—but he wasn’t really up for another awkward dinner with his dad, so he agreed. Might as well.

The movie turned out to be boring. But the kid sitting next to him, Bryan, was not. Together, they kept a running commentary going for the whole dull two hours, leaning over into each other’s space to whisper sarcastic comments or do impressions (Miller’s fairly good at a mocking tone, and Bryan has a surprising talent for voices—when Miller laughs during a particularly tense moment, the girl in front of him turns around and shushes him, which makes his day), and by the time the credits roll their knees are touching, and Bryan has touched his shoulder no less than a half dozen times, and Miller’s fallen harder than he has in ages, possibly ever.

He really, really doesn’t want to go back to Alpha.

“Yeah,” he admits. “That was the plan.”

What else could he have said? Where else could he be going? Yet Bryan looks disappointed, bordering maybe on surprised. The way he ducks his gaze down is stupidly attractive, in a confusing way, and around them the others start to move, say their goodbyes, and part, and they just stand there, each unwilling to head for the door.

"Maybe I could walk with you," Bryan suggests.

"Isn't that—" Miller starts, but then some random Farm kid bumps Bryan from behind, and he stumbles forward and just a bit too much into Miller's space, and the words seem to fall back and stick in his throat. "Really out of your way?"

"Not if I'm going to the library," Bryan answers, with a smile that borders on silly, like he knows he's only half trying and doesn't care. The story is plausible enough, if unlikely: who would go to the library at this hour on a Friday? And why doesn't Bryan step back again, now that there's room? Miller doesn’t bother to question it.

On the way to Alpha (they bypass the library entrance without even a glance), Miller learns that Bryan is sixteen; that he grew up on Farm Station and started working there, too, in one of the stupid grunt jobs, four months ago; that he loves Earth Skills and Botany and that he has an extensive personal knowledge of Earth geography; that he's on the wait list for single quarters but doesn't think he'll get anything this year, even though Farm isn't as crowded as Mecha or Factory but still; and that his default expression is an innocent and lovely looking smile, which seems to settle on his face without his notice, as if no other expression could ever hope to displace it.

Miller tells him, in turn, that he's almost seventeen; that he still, pathetically, doesn't know what he wants to actually _do_ ; that his dad is in the Guard and he is _definitely_ not going into the Guard; that he's in advanced level everything as a stalling mechanism mostly; that all the good professions ended with Earth itself anyway; that at least half of the people on the Council are total fools; and, in a particularly confessional moment, that he represented Canada in the Unity Day parade two years in a row, when he was seven _and_ eight, and that it might turn out to be the crowning achievement of his life.

He does not tell Bryan that he knows where all the best underground parties are (Factory Station, mostly, sometimes Tesla); that he's planned quite a few himself; that he's traded, a couple times, on the black market, the last time for a set of lock-picking tools in excellent condition; that he sometimes steals just to prove he can steal, and if someone needs what he has, he'll give it away, and if no one does, he just abandons his ill-gotten gains; that he does this not without sadness, but because the Ark is prison enough without getting locked in the Sky Box too. He does not tell Bryan these things, because he wants to be the sort of guy Bryan would like.

They stop at the entrance to the Alpha Station quarters. The door is locked, at this hour, to non-residents: there's nowhere else to go. Bryan's looking to him, either to key them both in or to say goodbye, and he's not sure which to do, so he just stands, different and conflicting words on the tip of his tongue.

Finally he manages, "Are you busy tomorrow?" in a tone not quite as casual as he'd been aiming for—but it's something.

Bryan's smile grows wider. "No," he answers. And then, as if he didn't know, "Why?"

"Because." He shrugs, uses the gesture to mask the way he steps closer, like it's nothing. When Bryan doesn't step back, he reaches out his hand, and rests it on the back of Bryan's neck as if to pull him closer. But the gesture is gentle, not aggressive or demanding at all. It ends up feeling more intimate than he'd expected it to. "Because I want to see you again."

“Yeah?”

The word is quiet, more a felt hum than a sound he can hear, but Bryan’s fisted his hands in Miller’s hoodie, brought them nose to nose, so it’s enough. The space between them feels like almost nothing, in comparison to the vast humming station around them, the corridors that stretch out and out, the vastness of the galaxy itself beyond the station walls.

He tilts his head to the right as he leans in.

This moment, before they kiss, seems to last an age—or at least that’s how he’ll remember it later, as he replays the evening again and again in his head. How he could feel the space between them just as he could feel Bryan’s breath on his skin. The kiss itself is different, will ignite in his thoughts as little more than sensations, barely captured, and feelings, barely contained. Soft press of lips, slow; a moment of leaning forward, then being pushed back; a low undercurrent of insistence. Bryan’s hands, gentle, on either side of his face. The way his own hand wavers, uncertain, just at Bryan’s hip. Yet it’s not an uncertain kiss, as most first kisses are. No, it feels like a kiss he’s been waiting for his whole life.

Not that he’d ever say anything so sappy or so irrational out loud.

He doesn’t want to pull away.

It’s when Bryan breaks the kiss, and they’re standing nose to nose and staring at each other, each smiling in the slightest can’t-believe-we-did-that way—that’s when his nerves take over. He’s not sure if he has great timing or awful timing, because it’s silly to second guess himself now and yet, if he’d felt this hammering in his heart earlier, he might never have willed himself to lean in. And what sort of reaction does he expect now anyway, or fear? It was a great kiss. No one would complain about a kiss like that.

“Wow,” Bryan breathes, at last, and the tension breaks. Miller can’t help it, a staggered bit of out-of-place laughter bubbles up and then breaks, the way his rush of adrenaline has finally decided to make itself known, and he presses his forehead against Bryan's and closes his eyes and wonders why he feels a little bit like he's been spinning.

He hears Bryan's voice, quiet and unoffended, sound of a smile in his words: "What? You didn't think that was a 'wow' kiss?"

"No, I did." He feels a surge of confidence, like he feels when he just _knows_ that someone else is _wrong_ , mixed with something like the thrill he gets from theft, and leans in for a second kiss without thinking. Like the first, it lingers. They don't want to let each other go. "I definitely did."


End file.
